Andiamo Trattoria
29 - 31 Lackey St
Summer Hill Sydney
What strikes you as you see Andiamo is just how big this place is. There is inside and outside seating and they can fit 110. Andiamo is deep and cavernous and the atmosphere is friendly, homey and comfortable. There are two sections - where you sit in the restaurant and the other side (inside as well) caters for Pizza's.
An impressive hand-made wood fire oven cooks these delicious pizza's. It was very busy and you can either eat in or pick-up and take-away. You can chose a wine with your meal or BYO. Sir and Mlady sat outside as it was a very pleasant evening.
Sir started the meal with an Italian beer - a Birra Moretti. This is a light golden coloured lager with a perfectly balanced, delicate malty flavour which was easy to drink. Mlady started and stayed with a GSM from Kurtz family in the Barossa Valley.
Our first entrée was Polpette - to us this is Nonna's homemade Italian meatballs. How good were these! They were light and tasty and were in a lovely, thick and rich home made tomato sauce.
You can sometimes associate meatballs with being quite filling and heavy but these meatballs were the opposite - very light and oh so fluffy. We loved them!
From the "Specials Board" we had the figs wrapped in prosciutto with Gorgonzola and a balsamic glaze. This had wonderful flavours and textures that were quite striking and they all complimented one another. No one ingredient overpowered the other, which made this a very tasty entrée.
The pizza we tried was the Salsiccia - Italian sausage, bocconcini and fresh basil. Seriously - fresh basil has such a lovely aroma that it is almost hypnotic and combined with this very tasty sausage and bocconcini and lets not forget the wonderful pastry that holds all this goodness together - this pizza ticked all the boxes.
Spaghetti Marinara was our next main. This consisted of calamari, prawns, octopus, mussels, garlic and chilli served in a Napoletana sauce. Both being huge fans of seafood - combined with - spaghetti - this was such a flavoursome dish. The seafood was tender and coated in a yummy Napoletana sauce - we thoroughly enjoyed this. It also had a bite to it - nice!
Sir loves lamb so we tried the Tuscan slow roasted lamb with a lemon style base. A lovely Tuscan salad partnered this. The lamb was marinated for 24 hours and slow cooked for a minimum of 8 hours. This was a big meal and great to share. It was tender and Sir really loved the flavours. A fresh vibrant salad went well with the dish too.
For dessert we had the home-made Tiramisu served with Espresso and we also had panna cotta topped with strawberries. These desserts were delicious! The were light fluffy and oh so very yummy. Combining the espresso with the Tiramisu enhanced the coffeeness (is there such a word?) even more.
To complete our really lovely meal we indulged in one of of favourite Italian liqueurs - limoncello. Seriously - how good is this! We love it!
Andiamo has in its name - trattoria del popolo - or casual Italian restaurant of the people. It truly is this, and more. It's a vibrant lively place with great food and service in very relaxed and pleasant surroundings.
Sir and Mlady dined as guests of Andiamo. Thanks to France, Kevin and Antonio for looking after us on the night. A very big thank you to Joe and Val for inviting us and for sharing their time and vision with us and to France for his time as well.
